Luxo Jr.
Luxo Jr. is a 1986 American computer-animated short film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The two-minute short film revolves around one larger and one smaller desk lamp. The larger lamp, named Luxo Sr., looks on while the smaller, "younger" Luxo Jr. plays exuberantly with a ball that it accidentally deflates. "Luxo Jr." was Pixar's first animation after Ed Catmull and John Lasseter left Industrial Light and Magic's computer division. It is the source of the hopping desk lamp included in Pixar's corporate logo. Lasseter's aim was to finish the short film for SIGGRAPH, an annual computer technology exhibition attended by thousands of industry professionals. The film would come from his experiments with modeling his Luxo lamp. Lasseter worked to improve the story within the allotted two minutes. In animation, the film demonstrates the use of shadow maps within the rendering software. Lasseter applied classic animation principles defined by Disney's Nine Old Men to convey the lamps' emotions. Catmull and Lasseter worked around the clock, and Lasseter even took a sleeping bag into work and slept under his desk, ready to work early the next morning.2 The commitment paid off, and it was finished in time to be shown at SIGGRAPH. Before Luxo Jr. finished playing at SIGGRAPH, the crowd had already risen in applause.3 Luxo Jr. is regarded as a breakthrough in the animation medium as a whole, changing traditionalists' interpretation of computer animation. The short was the first work of animation to use procedural animation, the software written by Eben Ostby.45 It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film, becoming the first CGI film nominated for an Academy Award. In 2014, Luxo Jr. was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Plot In a dark room, a large illuminated balanced-arm desk lamp named Luxo Sr. sees a small yellow ball with a blue stripe and a red star on the front rolling up to him. He eyes the ball curiously, and pushes it away, but the ball comes back to him. He pushes it away again. The ball comes back to him, but this time, it rolls past him. A smaller desk lamp, named Luxo Jr., hops over and continues playing with the ball. Luxo Jr. then balances himself on top of the ball, but it deflates. Luxo Jr. flips the deflated ball onto its side and looks up at Luxo Sr. who gently admonishes his son. Luxo Jr. then hops off-screen and is later seen playing with a beach ball. Luxo Sr. looks at the camera, then shakes his head in embarrassment. Background The Graphics Group, which was one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, had been associating with Industrial Light & Magic on computer generated graphics in the early 1980s. In 1984, the group produced an animated short titled The Adventures of André and Wally B. '', which premiered at the annual SIGGRAPH conference to great fanfare. The group, which numbered 40 individuals, was spun out as a corporation in February 1986 with investment by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer. Jobs paid $5 million to George Lucas for technology rights and put them and $5 million cash as capital into the company. A factor contributing to Lucas' sale was an increase in cash flow difficulties following his 1983 divorce, which coincided with the sudden dropoff in revenues from ''Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi. The newly independent company was headed by Dr. Edwin Catmull as President and Dr. Alvy Ray Smith as Executive Vice President. They were joined on the Board of Directors by Steve Jobs who was Chairman. Pixar's small animation department—consisting of Lasseter, plus the part-time supporting efforts of several graphics scientists—was never meant to generate any revenue as far as Jobs was concerned. Catmull and Smith justified its existence on the basis that more films at SIGGRAPH like André and Wally B. would promote the company's computers. The group had no film at SIGGRAPH the preceding year, its last year under Lucas's wing, apart from a stained-glass knight sequence they produced for Young Sherlock Holmes. Catmull was determined that Pixar would have a film to show at its first SIGGRAPH as an independent company in August 1986. Luxo Jr. was produced by Pixar employee John Lasseter as a demonstration of the Pixar Image Computer's capabilities. Two other short animations by two of the company's graphics experts were in production during the time in which Luxo Jr. was conceived. Bill Reeves, who was interested in algorithms to re-create the turbulence of ocean waves, made Flags and Waves, with waves reflecting a sunset and lapping against the shore. Eben Ostby, a Brown architecture major turned graphics programmer, made Beach Chair, starring a chair that walked across the sand and nervously approached the water, dipped its front legs in just far enough to test the temperature, then scurried along. Reeves and Ostby also assisted Lasseter with model making and rendering on Luxo Jr.Category:Pixar Category:1986 Category:Short films Category:Animated short films Category:Honorable mentions Category:Horribly Animated Classics